The present invention relates to portable information terminals capable of transmitting and receiving information, such as personal digital assistants (PDA) and cellular phones, and an information transmitting method.
Such a PDA with a business card exchange function is known that transmits user-entered business card information stored on it to another person's portable information terminal, using infrared frequencies. In addition, such a cellular phone is known that can transmit personal information about someone else or the phone user, or a schedule stored in the telephone directory of the phone to another cellular phone.
JP-A-137774/2000 disclosed an IC card characterized in that the information categories to transmit can alter according to the distance from the transmitting terminal to the receiving terminal device as the transmitter approaches the receiver.
When transmitting personal information to another person's terminal, using the above-described portable information terminals, it is desirable to alter the information specifics to transmit, according to the situation such as business or private contacts or how close the caller is to the called person or party.
However, the above-described PDA and cellular phone simply transmits the personal information stored in its memory to another terminal and does not allow for alteration of information categories according to the destination. Thus, if the user inputted not only office and home telephone numbers and e-mail addresses but also his or her birthday and blood type to the terminal, the terminal transmits all these information stored in its memory to the specified destination when it connects to another terminal, whoever the recipient is. The above-described portable information terminals do not allow the user to easily alter the information specifics to be transmitted, according to the situation or the destination and a problem was posed that they have limitations in usability.
The IC card described in JP-A-137774/2000 has two memories and the memory to access changes, according to the distance from the transmitter to the receiver, thereby changing the information specifics to transmit. Thus, by applying this method to a portable information terminal and storing different kinds of information into different memories of the terminal, the information specifics to transmit can be altered by the distance of transmission. However, a problem of this method is that the number of memories must be increased as the number of kinds of information to transmit increases.